Gender discrimination and local elections.
Jean benoit EYMEOUD, Paul VERTIER
Notes IPP | 2020
While the under-representation of women in politics is widely acknowledged, the reasons for this under-representation are still imperfectly understood and give rise to much debate. Among the possible explanations, the hypothesis that voters discriminate against women is frequently put forward, but not often substantiated. This study attempts to test this hypothesis in the case of France. To do so, we exploit a novel natural experiment that took place in France in March 2015 during the departmental elections. For the first time, candidates did not have to run alone but in pairs, necessarily composed of one man and one woman. The law also required that the order of appearance on the ballot be based on alphabetical order, which led to half of the pairs having a woman in the first position and vice versa. This historic change in the electoral process may have led some voters to believe that the candidate in first place on the ballot received more prerogatives than the person in second place, and thus to pay more attention to him or her. This reform provides an ideal analytical framework for assessing the presence of gender discrimination and analyzing its determinants: by comparing the votes received by pairs with a woman in the first and second position, and insofar as the gender of the first candidate is random, we are able to identify precisely the existence of discrimination by voters against women. In the end, we identify substantial discrimination against female candidates affiliated with right-wing parties, which affected the outcome of the election. We also show that voters' gender biases depend not only on the amount of information available on ballots, but also on the discrimination that exists in the local labor market.
Gender Biases: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in French Local Elections.
Jean benoit EYMEOUD, Paul VERTIER
2018
Women are under-represented in politics. In this paper, we test one of the potential explanations for this situation: gender-bias from voters. We use a natural experiment during French local elections in 2015: for the first time in this country, candidates had to run by pairs, which had to be gender-balanced. We argue that this reform confused some voters, who might have assumed that the first name on the ballot represented the "main" candidate. Since the order of the candidates on the ballot was determined by alphabetical order, the order of appearance of male and female candidates is as-good-as-random, and this setting allows us to isolate gender biases from selection effects. Our main result is that there exists a negative gender bias affecting right-wing candidates, who receive about 1.5 points lower shares of vote when the female candidate appears first on the ballot. The missing votes prevented some pairs of candidates from being elected. Using the fact that the candidates can (but do not have to) report additional information about themselves on the ballot, we show that this discrimination is likely to be statistical, since the most affected women are those running in pairs which do not report any information.
Housing and discrimination in economics : an empirical approach using Big Data and natural experiments.
Jean benoit EYMEOUD, Etienne WASMER, Philippe MARTIN, Etienne WASMER, Laurent GOBILLON, Claudia SENIK, Remy LECAT, Michel SERAFINELLI, Laurent GOBILLON, Claudia SENIK
2018
The first chapter documents a key parameter for understanding the housing market: the elasticity of housing supply in French urban areas. We show that this elasticity can be understood in two ways by considering intensive and extensive housing supply. Thanks to a large amount of new data collected and an original estimation strategy, this first chapter estimates and decomposes the two elasticities. The second chapter is devoted to the possibilities offered by Big Data to study the French rental housing market. By exploiting online data from December 2015 to June 2017 and comparing these data to traditional administrative data, we show that the internet provides data to accurately track local housing markets. The third chapter focuses on the discrimination of women in politics. It exploits a natural experiment, the 2015 French departmental elections in which, for the first time in the history of French elections, candidates had to run in mandatorily mixed pairs. Using the fact that the order of appearance of candidates on a ballot was determined by alphabetical order and showing that this rule does not seem to have been used strategically by the parties, we show on the one hand that the position of women on the ballot is random, and on the other hand, that right-wing pairings for which the name of the female candidate is in the first position on the ballot receive an average of 1.5 percentage points less votes.
Towards a mobility society.
Etienne WASMER, Jean benoit EYMEOUD
2016
In France, despite the various public actions undertaken, the level of youth unemployment has continuously increased since the 1970s. Is this inevitable? Have we identified the real obstacles to entering the labor market? While it has been proven that living in a region rich in qualified jobs systematically increases the chances of returning to work, we can be surprised by the very low mobility of young people in France. Why don't they move to better economic environments? This book shows that the phenomenon is not so much due to personal or family choices as to the existence of public policies that impede mobility. Housing and subsidized employment policies, in particular, tend to lock young people into what might be called immobility traps. The authors propose five public policy measures that would increase the mobility of young people and thus improve their integration into the labor market. (publisher's summary).
Towards a mobility society: youth, employment and housing.
Jean benoit EYMEOUD, Etienne WASMER
2016
No summary available.
Towards a mobility society: Youth, employment and housing.
Jean benoit EYMEOUD, Etienne WASMER
2016
In France, despite the various public actions undertaken, the level of youth unemployment has continuously increased since the 1970s. Is this inevitable? Have we identified the real obstacles to entering the labor market? While it has been proven that living in a region rich in qualified jobs systematically increases the chances of returning to work, we can be surprised by the very low mobility of young people in France. Why don't they move to better economic environments? This book shows that the phenomenon is not so much due to personal or family choices as to the existence of public policies that impede mobility. Housing and subsidized employment policies, in particular, tend to lock young people into what might be called immobility traps. The authors propose five public policy measures that would increase the mobility of young people and thus improve their integration into the labor market.
